"Thank you! But I wasn't going to say anything of the sort. The fact is that for a long while I've been making up my mind to see you some time when you were in England: there was no hurry, because so long as my father's alive I can do nothing, but when I heard you were coming to Wanhope the opportunity was too good to be missed. Railway fares," Val added with a preoccupied smile, "are a consideration to me. So don't walk away yet, Hyde, please. I have such a vivid recollection of the last time we met. Between the lines at dawn. Do you remember?"
"Everything, Val."
"You were badly hurt, but before you fainted you dragged a promise out of me."
"Dragged it out of you?" Lawrence repeated: "that's one way of putting it!"
"But I made some feeble resistance at the time," said Val mildly. "My head wasn't clear then or for a long while after, but I had a—a presentiment that it was a mistake. You meant it kindly." Had he? Lawrence laughed. He had never been able, to analyse the complex of instincts and passions that had determined his dealings with Stafford on that dim day between the lines.
"You were in a damned funk weren't you, Val?"
Stafford gave a slight start, the reaction of the prisoner under a blow. But apart from the coarse cynicism of it, which irritated him, it was no more than he had foreseen, and from then on till the end he did not flinch.
"Yes, anything you like: you can't overstate it. But my point is that I gave you my parole. Will you release me from it?"
"Good God!" said Lawrence.
He had never been more surprised in his life. "Come in: let us talk this over in the light."